Jordan Peele turned to cutting-edge technology to make Nope more visually spectacular. The 43-year-old director worked with the likes of Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer and Steven Yeun on his new horror film — but cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema also played an instrumental part in the project.
“I haven’t wanted to ruin the illusion, but I’ll ruin it for you today,” Peele said. “The night shots, for the most part, were shot in the day, which is due to a technological and strategic thing that [Hoyte] brought to the table.”
Van Hoytema visited locations in Agua Dulce, California, before the cameras started rolling, and he concluded that it wasn’t possible to capture the natural beauty of the sky and the stars. Van Hoytema told Variety: “There’s no way to photograph this, this feeling of vastness, and grandeur of the sky, which was such a big part of our story. We kind of immediately started thinking, ‘How can can we portray exactly that feeling that we have when we were out there in the field?’ I started very much exploring the technology, how can we do this? How can we photograph in the way eyes see it or the way that we experience it?”
Peele feels the spectacular nighttime cinematography is “really cool.” He added: “This thing really pushes film forward, and was difficult and it’s something that I’m excited to work with in the future and continue to push.”
Meanwhile, Daniel Kaluuya recently hailed the people who work behind the camera on a film project. The acclaimed actor said: “There are so many people that go into making a film — there’s the grips, there’s the camera department, there’s the sound, there’s so much kind of graft.”
